


You're My Lucky Seven

by Unknown



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 'Nuff said, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Steve McGarrett, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, and steve is a SeAL, because that's the only steve mcgarrett i acknowledge in my life, seriously danny is tired of the Universe, unconventional attitudes towards soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 05:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15406350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unknown/pseuds/Unknown
Summary: About 80% of the time, people find their soulmates before the age of 30. Sometimes, their soulmate dies before them, and if they're lucky enough (and their soul is flexible enough), they get a new soulmark.Danny's soul is flexible enough, thank god. It's just, he'd appreciate it if the universe would stop killing his soulmates.Cos he's on numberseven.





	You're My Lucky Seven

**Author's Note:**

> So this is pre-season one and into an AU with different seasons 2 through whatever. I've been going on a Hawaii 5-0 binge with my mom and this McDanno thought sprang to life over the weekend. I have another, much longer fic I'm working on for SnK, so _I don't have time for this_. It's sucking up my motivation and I have a deadline on that fic that consists of this Friday, and the damn thing _has no ending_. My hope is that once I get this shit out of my head, I'll be able to finish the other one. 
> 
> And then maybe write another one of these. 
> 
> Also: the title comes from something I said to my car earlier today. It's a small 2005 Mazda 3 and when I went to Vegas with my best friend squad, I got it those fuzzy dice. One friend (who wasn't there) commented on how I am very, very lucky with my car when I drive. I grabbed those dice and called my car Lucky Seven (after the dice, the vegas connection, and the Pacific Rim extended universe Jaeger piloted by Scott and Hercules Hanson - sidenote: who the fuck names one kid Scott and then goes with _Hercules_ for the other one??? - because I named my mother's and sister's cars Gypsy Danger and Striker Eureka respectively and needed my car to stay in the family). ANYWAY, I found a lost receipt in a parking lot today and patted my car and said, "You're my lucky seven." 
> 
> Also, Danny had seven soulmarks and I'm a walking-cliche lover.

Everyone in the world is born with a soulmark. That’s just how life is. That doesn’t mean those marks stay forever. Sure, about 80% of the time, people find their soulmates before the age of 30. But sometimes, their soulmate dies. A few things can happen.

One: you don’t get a new soulmate and live with the pinkish-red scarred over soulmark for the rest of your life. Or, if you’re lucky…

Two: you get a new soulmark on some other part of your body and have someone else to look for – but only if your soul is flexible enough. Some people have souls that just won’t let go. For example…

Three: those who meet their soulmate _and then_ lose them. They get to live their lives with the memories of the time spent with their perfect someone. Unless, of course…

Four: your soulmate dies _before_ you meet them, and _then_ you get a new soulmark. It happens often, but most wake up to a new mark and find their soulmate soon after.

And then of course, there’s the fifth, least-likely option that only happens if you’re especially unlucky: your soulmate _keeps dying before you meet them, and you keep getting new soulmarks._

* * *

Danny is four years old the first time it happens.

He wakes up sobbing and clutching his left arm, near his shoulder, a searing pain blinding him. His mother is in the room in moments, and his little body can’t handle the pain anymore, so he blacks out. When he wakes up, it’s to his mother running her fingers through his hair, crying herself. In the morning, he finds his soulmark – the one he was born with – mottled and pinkish, completely scarred over.

He isn’t sure what happened.

* * *

Danny is 6 years old when he wakes up to a new soulmark under his first one.

By now, his mother has explained why the first one did _that_. Whoever his first soulmate is had died, and that’s how the universe had let Danny know. Sure, he’d been upset at not having a soulmate anymore, but his mother had told him that if he was lucky enough, he might get a new one.

And he does.

When he’s 8, he screams in the middle of a baseball game, his arm dropping from where it had been braced to catch the ball. He’s on his knees, breathing hard through his nose, and he misses the ball completely. But his coach calls a time out and runs over to him, hovering as Danny sees black spots and his ears ring. He moves his hand and there’s a patch of blood right over his soulmark, seeping through his jersey. The coach wants to call foul play, but Danny shakes his head and quietly tells him it’s just his soulmark scarring over. His coach falls quiet and lets him swap out with Amos Ortega.

Later, his mother cleans him up at the kitchen table and lets him cry into her waist. Another one down, before he had ever met them. Matty doesn’t get it, just watches from the kitchen door with their dad. He found his soulmate already, the girl down the street that shares her crayons with him in class. Danny can’t even resent him because it’s not his fault. It’s the fucking _universe._

How could the universe be so cruel?

* * *

When he’s 11 and at a sleepover _without Matty_ , one of his friends shrieks and points to his upper arm, where those two pink, warped marks sit. Everyone watches as blood pools on the surface of Danny’s skin and rearranges itself into a mark. None of them have ever seen a soulmark surface before, though Amos had been at the baseball game (and won the game for them, too) when Danny had lost his second mark.

“Another one?” Amos says in disbelief, but also happiness. They had gotten closer over the years.

“You’re either really lucky to get a new one or really _unlucky_ to keep losing them,” Paloma says, poking it with her finger. It’s already solidified and turned a dark reddish-black. It’s sitting right under where the last one had scarred over. Danny can’t stop staring.

Is he lucky or unlucky, like Amos said?

A few hours later, Danny thinks he’s definitely _unlucky_ as his friends hold either of his hands while he sobs through the searing, burning pain of the new mark scarring over. Paloma has a wet cloth over it to staunch the bleeding and cool his skin. Amos is rubbing his back. They had offered to go get Paloma’s parents when Danny first woke up screaming into his pillow, but Danny had vehemently shaken his head and begged them to just sit with him while it happened. He didn’t want to be alone, ever.

But, he thinks, he may have to start getting used to it.

* * *

At 14, Danny pulls his shirt off in the locker room and stares into the mirror, stupefied at the mark that _hadn’t_ been there when his PE period started. Somehow, he had sprouted another mark while playing basketball.

Danny shoves a shirt on, shaking his head. He _hates_ this. The mark is right under the last one, and he has no hopes that this one is going to stick around. For some reason, the universe really doesn’t like Danny Williams, and honestly? Danny thinks the universe can just fuck right off.

His mother had taken him to a soulmark specialist when he was 12 and she had finally realized there was a third, scarred over mark on his arm that he hadn’t told her about. How many times could fate put a boy through heartbreak, she had asked the specialist? The woman had been startled but had looked into it. Apparently, Danny is one of less than 100 cases worldwide that has had more than 2 soulmarks. They check Matty, but he seems normal enough, besides his whacko attitude. His parents check out too. It’s just Danny. The specialist, Tehani Mahelani, had told him not to expect another one, but here he is, walking to his third period world history class, a new mark on his arm. He’ll tell his mom when he gets home, endure her claims of a miracle, and then do his homework, counting the days until this one burns up in a mess of blood and pain like the others.

Because Danny has accepted that maybe he’ll never get a soulmate, and that’s ok. That just means he’ll have no one who’s _perfect_ for him, but he knows he’ll find _someone_ out there and they’ll work it out. He sees it on TV all the time, those people born without a soulmark that marry someone else without a soulmark or with a scarred over mark and no sign of a new one coming in. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need the world’s version of happy when he can make a version of happy himself. He’s resourceful, crafty even.

He'll be ok.

* * *

He still cries when his fourth mark burns off at 16, right in the middle of his birthday party, with Paloma and Amos among the small group that has gathered made up of mostly family, and his two aforementioned friends. His mother has his sleeve rolled up and is trying not to cry as well, while his uncle dabs at the crusting blood and wipes his arm down with antiseptic.

And then, he wipes at Danny’s arm again. And again. And again.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Uncle Robby says, and Danny is craning his neck over to look at his arm.

Another fucking soulmark.

He groans and lets his head plop down onto the bathroom counter. Amos and Paloma pop their heads in, looking down at his arm. Matty tries to shove his head in too, but they both shove him out, because they know if Matty gets in, then Danny’s little sisters will want to come and see the mess too. They tell him to go play with his girlfriend instead, which, to be fair, is a pretty good idea for him, so he goes. He crows that playing with his soulmate is his favorite thing to do and sticks his tongue out at all of them before disappearing down the hall. Both Amos and Paloma wince.

“You could still be lucky, you know,” Amos says, though his grimace says otherwise.

Five soulmarks. Danny’s 16 and has had _five_ soulmarks. This isn’t normal.

His uncle leaves with his mom to trash their dirty supplies in the kitchen, all the while muttering about how he’s never seen a soulmark set in and never seen someone with so many already get another one. His mom is silent, probably doing what Danny is doing: contemplating when this one will scar over too.

What is it that they say? Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. Well, then, Danny thinks, what the fuck is four or five times? A wicked twist of fate?

“This one sorta looks like a flower,” Paloma says, trying to lighten the mood. It doesn’t really work. She’s turning 17 in six months. She’s already found her soulmate – a shy girl from California that she had matched up with on one of the thousands of mark-match websites. When she graduates, Paloma is heading over there to meet and live with her. They’ll probably get married a few years down the line, after both women have jobs or careers secured. Amos has his mark up too but is still waiting on a hit.

Danny could take a photo and upload it to any of those sites and then wait for someone to do the same. Some are official, with doctor’s offices or the government. It’s how his mother found his dad, for instance. But every time he looks at the column of scars down his arm, he winces. So far, Danny hasn’t had the best luck in soulmates; he’s never met any of them and they’ve all died. He’s never had a face to put to the death before, though, and he would _hate_ to have someone’s name and face haunt him for the rest of his life.

So, he never looks. Danny doesn’t think he ever will.

* * *

He’s 18, applying to the police academy and getting his bachelor’s in criminal justice, when the fifth one burns off, right in the middle of the interview. His interviewer looks horrified at his gasp and the blood seeping right through his button-down shirt. Danny grits his teeth and assures the interviewer that it’s happened before, and that the man shouldn’t be too concerned. He smiles after he says it, and wonders if his resolve and calm head in the midst of what should have been a traumatizing experience is what got him his spot, but he tries not to think of it too much.

When he gets out of the academy and starts his new life as a cop, Danny decides to reward himself. He has to call his mom and ask for the first few dates, as he was a bit too young to remember and he _knows_ she wrote them down, but he gets the dates that his soulmates died tattooed near their marks. It’s the least he can do to remember these five people by, even if he never knew them.

There are websites that he can upload his ruined marks to and see if there are matches to the dead. In most countries of the world, it’s now common practice to take photos of soulmarks if the dead person had not met their soulmate yet, and to upload it to the international archives for poor shmucks like Danny to dig around for a hit. But Danny doesn’t do that either, much for the same reason that he had never looked for a soulmate in the first place. It’s exhausting, having lost that many people, and he’s not even legal to drink yet.

So, he works and lets the tattoos heal, little black numbers separated by dots, right near the people they belong to.

_09.25.1980_

_10.12.1984_

_01.12.1988_

_08.23.1992_

_11.29.1994_

He feels better about them, to be completely honest. They’re not just floating failures burned into his skin for the rest of his sorry life; they have purpose now. He’s made his body into a memorial for those he’s lost. And this way, they’re less of an eyesore if anyone happens to see them.

* * *

Danny punches a wall and gets sent home for the day when he gets the sixth one. He’s 20, and he’s so fucking tired of this. He’d had two swell years of nothing and now this? He doesn’t want to sound ungrateful, but honestly. He knows what’s going to happen; in the next few years, if he’s lucky enough to have that long, it’s going to scar over just like the rest of them.

He calls his mother and tells her, says no when she asks if he wants her to call Matty or the girls, and then stays with her on the line even though they’re both silent.

“What are you going to do, honey?” she asks. “Do you want me to come over?” His apartment is small, but the couch folds out into a futon, and he’ll sleep on it, so she can have the bed.

“Kinda,” he admits.

His mother stays with him over the weekend, but the mark is still there when she’s getting ready to head to work on Monday morning, making coffee by his side. He’d always gotten on with her, no matter how much she could nag and he could snipe back. Moving out had been the best thing they could have done for their relationship though; as good as they were around each other, they get on even better now that they don’t see each other nearly as often.

She hugs him in front of his apartment door before they both take off to their respective cars.

“Call me if… if anything happens,” she says by his ear, and he knows she means _call me if and when it scars over_. Just so he doesn’t have to be alone through it. He hasn’t had to be alone through them, ever, and she doesn’t want this to be the first time.

He agrees and watches her go before getting into his car and heading to the station. He calls the specialist, updating her to his newest find. She’s been documenting his case since they went to her when he only had three scarred over marks to show for it. As far as she knows, Danny had the most known marks at five, and now he’s broken his own record with the sixth. He chooses to remain anonymous in all her data, but she keeps him updated whenever she comes back from conferences where his blood, skin samples, and marks have been the main topic of discussion. It’s a bit disorienting, but he’s always game to hear the new theories people have about him. His favorites, by far, had been the doctor from Helsinki that stated he might be a god, and the other from a specialist in Hong Kong that suggested he might be an alien.

Late at night, Danny is just thankful that no one has claimed he’s a witch yet. The last thing he needs now is to be burned at the stake.

* * *

He’s 25 when this one disappears. It’s the longest he’s ever kept a soulmark for.

Danny mourns this one, really mourns it. He’s at a bar, drinking with his buddies when he feels the familiar burn and tears up about it for the first time since he was 16. He grips one of the guys tightly on the shoulder and leans in to whisper that he thinks he’s losing his soulmark, and can he maybe come with Danny to the bathroom to help him check?

The guy, Jakob, nods and they go, drawing looks from some and hoots from others. But when they hit the empty bathroom and Danny takes off his shirt in the handicap stall with the door closed, the result is the same: his soulmark, the one he’s had for 5 years, is scarring over in a messy puff of skin and dripping blood. Jakob sits with him until it’s over and stays quiet when Danny lets out a few broken sobs. He knows Jakob has his soulmate husband at home with their three kids, knows this man understands the gravity of what just happened. He knows Jakob is trying very hard not to think of this happening to him or to his husband. Danny wonders if Jakob’s going to show up to work tomorrow. The guy is _definitely_ going to go home to his spouse and kids after this, though.

Jakob helps him get cleaned up and then drives him home, promising to get one of the guys to help drive Danny’s car back. In the meantime, he tells Danny to lay down and get some sleep, then call family or someone he’s close to in the morning.

“It’s not _that_ serious,” Danny replies as Jakob tucks him into the couch with his favorite blanket. Jakob gives him an incredulous look. Danny rolls up his now-clean sleeve and points to the other scars that Jakob probably hadn’t been paying attention to.

“ _Six?_ ” he asks, a hand covering his mouth in surprise at the outburst.

“And see, this is why I wear long sleeves at work,” Danny grumbles. “Yes, six. I never met any of them. It seems the universe likes pairing me up with people who are either very accident prone or get into dangerous situations.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jakob says, probably thinking about the shoot-out Danny got into a few days ago, of which his survival had been what they were celebrating at the bar in the first place.

“Maybe none of them coulda kept up with me,” Danny jokes as Jakob leaves.

“Yeah,” Jakob says before closing the door. “Maybe.”

* * *

He meets Rachel pretty soon after.

Her soulmark is scarred over as well, and she had only had a week with the guy in the terminal cancer wing of a hospital beforehand. Danny is unsettled at the ghost hanging around their relationship from the start, but for the first time in his life, he’s trying to make something work, so he ignores it. By the time Grace is born, he knows he shouldn’t have, but at this point, they’re already married and he’s still six soulmates down. But still, Rachel wakes up married to a cop, _a detective_ , and he knows she hasn’t made peace with that, especially when she had taken a long, contemplative look at his arm of scars.

Rachel had looked at him with the same pity Jakob had, and Danny knows she isn’t _the one,_ but he also knows that there is no _the one_ for him, so it’s sort of stupid to be hoping he’ll find them.

 Grace is 2 when Rachel’s second soulmark surfaces. Danny starts counting down to when they’ll fall apart.

It doesn’t take too long, to be honest. They’ve had issues from the start, and then he finds out that Rachel actually uploaded her mark to one of the classier websites that’s all government and medical approved. It’s even international. Danny tries not to be hurt, but one night, they’re slinging insults at each other and she blurts it out and he’s so, so wounded by it.

Then she says, “If you had another one, wouldn’t you want to know too?”

“No!” he screams immediately, with absolutely no hesitation. “I’ve lost _six_ , Rachel. Why would I want to put a face to the one that’ll actually _break_ _me_ when they’re inevitably gone?”

They split, and he stays in a motel down the street during the first six months of the divorce, just so he can stay close to his baby girl. Matty stays with him every one of those nights and Danny somehow gets through it. Matty’s married to his soulmate by now and they have a kid on the way, which thank _god_ , because Danny had been getting worried that Matty would pull something stupid at work with all that money floating around on Wall Street. But his wife and their baby have grounded him some, enough that he’s here for Danny _and_ meeting his quota for work while keeping his nose clean, in every sense of the word.

Three years after their divorce, Rachel gets a hit on her mark. The guy’s rich and successful, attractive to boot. Danny would have given him a once-over in his own prime. That is, until the asshole opens his mouth. Then Danny wants to throw himself into oncoming traffic on the Jersey Turnpike just to avoid any conversation with him. But hey, he’s Rachel’s soulmate and Grace’s step-dad now. So, Danny sucks it up and smiles when he meets the guy and pretends that he doesn’t want to wash his hands twelve times after he gets offered a handshake.

Matty says he’s being dramatic now; Danny thinks that’s valid.

* * *

Because she’s his daughter too, Danny gets invited to Grace’s 8th birthday party. He’s turning 34 in a few months. Not that he feels old or anything, but going to a party full of kids under the age of 10 with their parents all hanging around like it’s one giant, extended PTO meeting… ok, it makes him feel old, especially because he doesn’t _know_ anyone. But he comes, and he brings Grace’s gift (a toy he had been determined to get her, so he told Stan and Rachel ahead of time so _they_ wouldn’t get it for her) and he sucks it up.

He’s in the bathroom washing his hands when he feels a bit of an itch by his tattoos and scars. The last one had been there for a while now – the next line of _12.15.2001_ sitting around on his arm – so it couldn’t be that. He slides his shirt off just to be sure nothing has gotten infected, because that’s just what he would need right now, an infection acting up at his daughter’s birthday party.

There’s another fucking soulmark on his arm, right above his elbow and under the last, scarred over one.

Danny punches a hole into the bathroom wall.

Rachel comes to check on him an hour later and finds him sitting on the toilet, staring at his bloody hand. She sees the wall and is about to start a fight with him when she realizes he’s just in a tank-top with his shirt in his lap. And then she sees _it_ and understanding lights up in her eyes when they make their way back to the hole by her mirror. She closes the door and sits with her back against it on the carpet.

“Can I do anything?” she asks, even though she knows she can’t.

“No,” Danny responds, blinking down at his hands. He really needs to work on his anger management.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Me too,” Danny replies. He shrugs his shirt back on. “I’ll pay for the wall.”

“There’s no need,” she insists, trying to be nice about something for once. Danny takes it. He needs a little nice right about now.

* * *

“I don’t know why I would get another one ten years after the last,” Danny says, in a meeting with Dr. Mahelani. “It doesn’t make any sense. Would the universe just leave me alone?” He looks up to the ceiling and spreads his hands in supplication. “Please?”

“You know,” she says looking at his bare arm and where the new soulmark has come up, “I gotta say, something about your soulmarks prior to this have always bothered me.” They’re video chatting and she’s squinting at her screen and the pictures of his arm that he’s sent her.

“Wait, my soulmarks bother you? Why didn’t you tell me they bothered you? _Why_ do they bother you?” Danny asks, immediately on the defensive. This new mark is darker than the others had been, almost completely black, and it’s a bit bigger, too. It almost looks like a wicked, jagged hook with something floating inside the hollow space made by the curve.

“Me and the committee have been discussing it for years, but we could never be sure if it was a _you_ thing or a soulmark thing because all of your marks had a similar constitution,” she continues. Recently, she had moved back to Honolulu, where she had grown up, so video chatting is all they can do for now. “But with this mark for comparison, I think I have a solid theory on what’s been going on with you.”

“Hit me with it, Doc,” Danny says, running his hands through his hair. His heart hasn’t stopped pounding since he discovered the damn thing at the party. “Am I really an alien?”

“Your previous six marks were… I guess the best way to describe it is _immature_ ,” Dr. Mahelani explains. At his frown of confusion, she continues. “They were all smaller than the average soulmark and redder. The one you have now looks like what an average soulmark should be. Bigger, darker, and the design has more crisp edges than the others.”

“So, what,” Danny says. “My other soulmarks were… I don’t know, fake? Not valid?” No fucking way. He mourned those people.

“Oh, no they were all valid enough. There were people attached to those marks, people who had the same marks on their bodies, that much I know. I’ve looked into them, even if you haven’t. But… they were all normal sized and colored; yours weren’t.”

“What does that mean, then?” Danny asks.

“This is a system we don’t understand,” she says, her voice going soft. “And I don’t want you to feel bad about what I’m going to say, but I think I need to say it.”

“Fuck,” Danny says. He sits back on his couch and nods. “Ok, go. I’m all ears.” Even if he doesn’t necessarily want to be.

“I think that _you_ were their soulmate, no doubt about it. But… I don’t think _they_ were yours.”

“Huh?” Danny says, sitting up and getting as close to the screen as possible. “That doesn’t even make sense. You just said we had the same marks.”

“I think the universe paired them up with you, either because it was trying to find a soulmate that would stick or _because_ it knew they were going to go early, and maybe if you had met with them, you would have made their lives amazing up until the moment they went,” she explains, struggling to find the words herself. “But, while they would have been good for you, they never would have been permanent, because they were all fated to die. Not that either you or those people would have known at the time, had you met.”

“Ok,” Danny says, unsure. “Go on.”

“So, you’re their soulmate, but they’re not yours, not completely. Or at least, not a soulmate that you would ever be able to keep. Maybe that’s why the universe kept you from meeting them. A tradeoff; give the fated-to-die-young a solid soulmate that could make them happy if they ever met up, but protect that person who would have had to go through the constant pain of loss so many times over.”

“But I _did_ go through the constant pain of loss so many times over!” Danny snaps, slamming a hand on the table.

“It’s different, Danny,” Tehani says, rubbing her wrist unconsciously. It is then that he remembers that she had met her soulmate and spent years with her, decades even, before the woman had died of an aneurism in her sleep. “It’s different when you meet them and then they go.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but she stops him.

“It’s fine.”

“You were saying?”

“Right, well. I think you can only torture a soul so many times before it gets ridiculous. And souls are only so flexible. This soulmark is different. It looks like whoever is on the other end? You were fated to end up with them eventually. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had the matching soulmark their entire life,” she finishes. But then she sighs. “Then again, it’s just a theory, Danny. I don’t know what controls the soulmarks; no one does. I could be wrong.”

“You don’t sound wrong,” Danny mumbles, because there seems to be at least a kernel of truth to what she’s telling him, based on how it sounds alone. “I was the universe’s dumping ground then, huh?”

“I hope this one works,” she says. “I hope you look this time, Danny.”

Danny snorts. Yeah. Maybe.

* * *

The one good thing about moving to Hawaii is that he gets to actually meet with Dr. Tehani Mahelani in person again. She asks him why the hell he moved all the way out here and he tells her all about Step-Stan’s job, how Rachel had been willing to move Grace out here for it, and how Danny had been willing to move for Grace. Six months later, he’s celebrated his birthday on this damn island alone and managed to get at least his work partner to like him. For now, it’s a start.

“I’m 34, doc. I’m too old for this heat. How the hell do you stand it?” he gripes.

“It’s good for your old man bones,” she responds, flicking him on the nose. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s almost two decades older than he is. “Now let me see that new mark.”

It’s hot enough that Danny rolls up his sleeves or wears short-sleeved button-downs to work, so he’s taken to wrapping his arm in gauze, just above his elbow where his new soulmark rests. It’s no one’s business at work what he’s got under it and he doesn’t need a mark that would stand out so stark against his skin attracting attention to the six scars above it.

Tehani is enamored with it. She takes pictures, promising not to upload them anywhere, and measures it. She draws blood and takes skin samples. She writes notes and sends emails to colleagues. She goes into the system and updates his file to include a new soulmark. Danny breaks his own record again for the second time in his life. He honestly hopes it’s the last. When this one burns away, he doesn’t want anymore, no thank you. The universe can literally fuck right off and choke. Danny’s too tired to keep doing this for the rest of his life.

“I have a good feeling about this one, Danny,” Tehani says with a wide grin. Danny snorts and pulls down his sleeve.

A good feeling? He could live without it, thanks.

* * *

Danny meets Steve a week later and instantly knows something is _up_ , like fate-wise, destiny-wise, _whatever_.

Sure, they clash, _hard,_ but then he realizes that _they really fucking don’t_. They compliment each other well, too well, almost. Danny doesn’t like it. He wants to be mad that he’s gotten dragged into some special task force without being asked, but he also likes the freedom he’s granted, and how much better the pay is.

He also loves the people.

Besides being absolutely gorgeous with cheekbones that could slice steel, Chin can do things with technology that Danny literally cannot comprehend because he can barely work his own damn phone. He had been shocked to see the man walking about with his soulmark so exposed on his inner wrist, but when Chin had caught him staring, he had simply shrugged.

“That’s how it is here, brah,” Chin had said with a smile and a shrug. Apparently, he and his soulmate were on weird terms and not actively pursuing their relationship. It sounds too complicated for Danny to want to follow just yet, so he settles for drooling over the man’s face and skills from afar.

Kono, Chin’s cousin, on the other hand, has her soulmark on her neck.

The woman is frightening with how competent she is. If Chin’s superpower is technology, then Kono’s is kicking ass. Danny is simultaneously scared and horny when Kono is going after people, and honestly, can anyone really blame him? But when he gestures to it, she shrugs and explains that they had never been raised to hide it or be ashamed of it growing up. She hadn’t found her soulmate yet and isn’t actively trying.

“I have a career to start, _haole_ ,” she says, teasing him with the moniker. “I can look for love later. It’s not like they’re gonna run off on me.”

Danny bites back his aserbic and morbid, _but they can certainly die on you_ and just nods. He rubs his scars for the rest of the day and can’t bear to look at his mark that night. He’s already promised himself that he’s not looking for this one and that he doesn’t fucking _want to_ , no mater what Dr. Mahelani ( _call me Tehani_ , he hears her echo in his head) says.

Then, of course, there’s Steve. Danny wonders how many times the man can bring him to the brink of a heart attack. Steve had asked Danny about the gauze strip tied to his arm, the only thing visible that day. Danny thanks his lucky stars, even still, that his scars had been safely tucked away.

“Soulmark. Why, does it matter?” he says, trying to seem exasperated and not nervous.

Steve shrugs. “Just curious.” He points to one of his tattoos.

“Yeah, and? I don’t speak Neanderthal. Use your words. What is it?” Danny says, rolling his eyes.

“Mine’s in my tattoo,” Steve says.

“You had it tattooed over?” Danny practically shouts. At least he isn’t _that_ crazy.

But Steve shrugs. “You learn to hide it or find it in the military,” he explains. “A lot of people I know found theirs early on or when they were in the service. People tend to gravitate towards their other half, you know?” He shrugs. “I tried to find but couldn’t, so then I switched to hide. You don’t want your worst enemies to figure out where your greatest weakness is before you even meet them.” Danny, at least, understands that. “So, I took pictures and hid them, then had it outlined in this ink that glows when you put a UV to it. Then I had it made into part of a tattoo. The artist doesn’t even remember where she put it.” He laughs at the look of shock on not only Danny’s face, but Chin’s and Kono’s as well.

“Damn, McGarrett. I knew you were a crazy son of a bitch, but that’s ballsy, even for me,” Chin says with a low whistle.

“Don’t you ever forget what it looks like?” Kono asks.

“All the time,” Steve says, like it doesn’t matter much. “Honestly, it’s not a big deal. I can always shine a UV light on my arm and find it or go through my photos and find the original shape.”

“You, my friend, have issues,” Danny responds as he shakes his head at the audacity this man has.

“Awh, we’re friends now, Danno?” Steve coos, a tease if there ever was one. They’ve been friends for months, at this point. Danny’s taken how many bullets for him? At some point, it stops being for show.

“Don’t call me that,” Danny snipes, but it’s half-hearted at best, and at worst, it’s way too fond with the amount of indigestion Steve is in the habit of giving him due to all the stress.

Ugh. Danny thinks he might be falling in love. Imagine that.

* * *

Steve’s not a bad guy, is the problem.

And Danny can ignore all the talks of soulmates all he wants, but when he looks at Steve, he thinks this may be what he could have felt with all the others. Steve is stubborn and reckless and an annoying as fuck know-it-all asshole. But he’s as kind as he is merciless, as gentle as he is murderous. He cradles Grace’s torn up knee in the same hands as he’s killed with. He cleans out her wound and bandages it with the same grace that slit throats for a living. He teaches her how to stand on her surfboard with Kono with the same patience that let him wait for people to walk into the perfect spot on his scope before he pulled the trigger.

Danny wants to hate it, wants to be bitter, and cite _murderer_ as a reason to get his baby as far away from Steve McGarrett’s hands as possible, but that would be a lie. Everyone Steve has killed has probably deserved it and the only things Danny is running from now are his own damn feelings, and he’s not about to admit to his kid that he’s got that much embarrassing emotion bottled up inside. She’d just end up lecturing him about letting it out in healthy amounts like he’s been telling her for years in order to avoid the same problem he’s landed himself with. Danny is not in the mood to get schooled by a grade-schooler, thanks.

Steve understands Danny on some level that no one else he has ever met gets. Yes, the man drives him crazy on a daily basis, but that saves Danny from being sucked into the dark corners of his own mind or from being bored to the point of harm. He knows when Danny is low and is there, knows when Danny is on his bullshit again and calls him on it, knows when Danny needs to calm the fuck down, and let’s be honest, that’s way too often. But Steve always manages to talk him down.

But Danny picks up on Steve’s moods too. He’s gone to great lengths to help this man with his parents’ murder investigations and keeping his sister safe. Steve may execute some crazy plans, but the ideas they sprung from were _way_ crazier, and it’s Danny that whittles them down to something manageable. Sometimes, Danny knows Steve forgets, in a way – _his way_ – that immunity does not mean they are back in the SeALs, that there are some lines he can’t and shouldn’t cross anymore. Sometimes, something gets lost in his eyes, the gleam goes out, and he’s just … _surviving._ More times than he wants to acknowledge, Danny has pulled him out of that, pulled him back to the world they live in _now_ , and welcomed him back into their home with open and caring arms. Danny isn’t going to let him go, and Steve trusts in that, in _him_ , as much as Danny does.

But Steve remains Steve, which is to say, fucking _perfect._ More than ever, Danny wants his soulmark to just burn away already, like he’s sure it will eventually do, so he can feel less bad about wanting to have his way with Steve and then make an honest man out of him _and holy shit that was fast._

“Come in the water, Danno!” Grace calls to him, leaning against Steve’s waist with one hand fisted in the hem of his shorts and the other waving. Danny would swim across oceans for her, if she asked him to.

“Yeah, come in the water, Danno,” Steve calls after her with that wicked, holy smile on his face.

Danny would swim across oceans for him, too.

* * *

Over a year and a half after they first meet, they actually fuck.

Steve is gorgeous under him, making the softest sounds and the greatest faces. He’s so open and honest like this, pliant and sweet. Danny doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, and he thinks they both might know it. Afterward, they lay together in the dark, neither of them mentioning the fact that Danny had kept that stupid gauze tied around his arm, and that Steve had let him.

They both have marks, and they both know their soulmates are out there, but here they are, ignoring all of that for the sake of the other. Danny doesn’t want to say, _if that ain’t love then I don’t know what is_ , but.

In the morning, he makes Steve French-toast and bacon, and they sit in their boxers around his little kitchen table and eat. He has Grace this weekend, and Steve asks if it would be alright to take her to the beach for the afternoon, just the three of them and the stretch of sand behind Steve’s house. Danny gets a bit choked up, he won’t lie, because his daughter is _everything_ to him, and it seems like she’s becoming that for Steve too. So he says yes, and leans over to press a kiss to Steve’s mouth without thinking about it because it just feels right, ok?

Steve kisses him back, and just like that, they’re pulling round two against the kitchen counter. Steve’s laughing and his kisses taste like cinnamon-sugar, and Danny is grumbling and then snapping his hips forward hard enough to shut Steve up. After, they have coffee on his couch, leaned up against each other despite the heat, sweating.

“I gotta say, Steven,” Danny says, going for nonchalant and feeling acrid nerves. “I think I like you.”

“Oh, you think so, Danno?” Steve laughs. He snickers and presses a kiss to Danny’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I think I like you too.”

“Really?” Danny says, trying not to sound too surprised. Why the hell else would Steve be here, drinking tepid coffee in his hot, dingy house?

“Yeah, really,” Steve responds, shaking his head. “Don’t sound too surprised.”

“But what about…?” Danny presses a finger to Steve’s soulmarked tattoo.

Steve just looks into his cup. “I could say the same for you.”

Danny thinks about it, long and hard. He’s never willingly just shown someone his scars and explained what they were. People usually just caught him in a vulnerable situation when something terrible was happening that had to do with them, and so found out that way. He remembers Rachel accidentally touching them during sex, and getting peeved when Danny flinched away completely and couldn’t finish – that’s how she had found out. Of course, Jakob had been in the bathroom with him in the pub, and Amos and Paloma, both happily married with their soulmate spouses and children, had been with him when the third one came and went. But, just telling someone because Danny thought they deserved to know? Never happened.

At least, not until now.

Danny squirms around on the couch until the arm in question is facing Steve. “See my little tattoos?” Danny says, then holds his breath as Steve squints and looks down.

“Yeah, I noticed them at work sometimes, or the beach. Little numbers near some pink skin,” Steve says. Danny actually laughs, his tension breaking.

“Look a little closer, Steven,” he says. Steve does.

“Wait, babe, are those…?” He lifts a hand and stops short of Danny’s arm. “May I?” No one’s ever asked before, but Danny truly doesn’t mind if it’s Steve doing the touching, so he nods. Steve traces over his scarred over soulmarks. “Are these soulmarks?”

“They were,” Danny admits.

“You have seven?” Steve asks, voice still neutral. But something is there, lurking just under the surface, ready to break.

“Well, I _had_ six. I never met any of them. I put the dates they scarred over near them, you know, just to remember them by. I got the seventh one not too long before I moved here,” Danny explains. “As far as my specialist knows, I’m the only person in the world to have this many. I’ve even broken my own record a couple of times,” Danny throws in, trying to lighten the mood.

“Danny,” Steve says, whispers really. He feels something wet drip onto his arm, and when Danny looks up at Steve’s face, he sees the man is crying.

“Uh, Steve?” he asks, shocked and at a loss of what else to say.

“Sorry,” Steve says, wiping at his eyes and nose. “It’s just… god, I hate to think of you suffering. That first one was what, when you were four? I keep thinking of baby-Danny crying and I…” He shakes his head and finally locks his eyes on Danny’s. There’s no pity in them, just a deep sadness for _Danny_ and his suffering. Steve strokes a reverent thumb down the line of scars and then presses a kiss against the shorn skin. “Is that why you keep the new one covered?” he asks when he pulls back. There’s no judgement in his voice or his eyes.

“Yeah,” Danny admits. “I’ve lived my whole life with these damn things coming up and burning out. And maybe…” He trails off. “Maybe we don’t work out, but fine. I’ve done that, too. I’ll take what you’re willing to give me and I’ll take it for as long as your willing to give it, too. I just don’t want these damn things to control how I live my life anymore, or who I’m with. Fuck that, Steve.”

“Ok,” Steve says, pursing his lips and nodding his head. “I respect that. It doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you were thinking.” Danny _had_ been thinking it, so he shrugs and nods. “It doesn’t,” Steve repeats, then smiles that lopsided smile that makes Danny’s heart flutter a bit. “Ok. If you ever change your mind and want to find them, that’s ok too.”

“Same to you,” Danny says.

“Oh, god no,” Steve says with a full body shiver. “Drag a civilian into my life? No thanks.”

“Oh, but dragging me into it is just fine?” Danny teases, feeling like some weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

“You’re not a civilian,” Steve says as Danny pushes him back onto the couch and straddles his waist.

“They might not be a civilian,” Danny reminds him, kissing down his throat.

“Yeah, well, they might not be _you_ ,” Steve admits in a small voice, right by Danny’s ear.

“True,” Danny says carefully, unsure what to do with that declaration. He chooses to cherish it and hold it close to his heart, because soon, he just knows it, Steve is going to want to go looking, just like Rachel did.

When he does, Danny vows to be ready to let him go.

* * *

They go at it for another few years. Steve doesn’t mention ever wanting to look. Danny isn’t so sure he’ll be ready to let go now if he does.

Their team and the governor have already been made aware of their relationship status. Rachel and Grace are told as well, when Danny realizes that this is actually sorta kinda serious. Rachel eyes Steve’s bare arms and the tattoos, she looks at Danny’s covered mark and frowns, as though trying to convey that fate will catch up with them sooner or later. But Danny steadfastly ignores her because they’re not married anymore and she can’t tell him what to do.

And things are great, they are. He’s moved into Steve’s house, they’ve vamped the place up and it looks completely different now. Grace has her own room for when she’s with them on the weekends, the team is prospering and doing well. Hell, Kono is even thinking of maybe looking for love naturally first before she goes searching the databases for her perfect match. She keeps saying maybe she’ll find her Steve and it’s fucking bothering Danny because _they’re not soulmates_.

That. That’s what’s bothering him. They’re not soulmates and they _have_ soulmates, so who are they to be depriving these people of their perfect half? But then Danny thinks of that mark burning up again, because he knows it will, every other mark has done it, and what’s the point, he thinks? What the fuck is the point of going through that again when he can be with Steve and have Steve there when it happens instead?

He tells Steve this one night.

“It’s gonna happen again,” Danny says, rubbing the gauze that he never takes off. Steve’s never seen the mark behind it. “It’s gotta. Every other one has.”

“Maybe Dr. Mahelani is right. Maybe it’s different,” Steve says, trying to curb his despair.

“Hey, even if it never does, I’m not leaving you for that reason,” Danny snaps. “If I do leave you, it’ll be because you left your socks in the space between the bed and the wall again.”

“I cleaned those up!”

But it bothers him. He feels like he’s being dishonest with Steve by not showing him the damn thing, at least.

* * *

And then, of course, Steve gets shot.

He’s bleeding out in an ambulance and Danny is right there, holding his hand, every fibre of his being on fire from the emotional anguish. His soulmarks burning off have absolutely _nothing_ on what he feels when he sees those heartlines go flat, that hand falling limp in his as Steve had been muttering something under his breath, not completely lucid and far too deep into his dreaming.

Danny thinks he screams louder than the EMTs that unload Steve from the back of the ambulance and run him into the ER where they have people with the shock pads.

“Oh god, oh no, oh please, no, no, no, _NO!_ ” Danny is yelling, yanking at his own hair. He hurts, god he hurts everywhere; his head, his heart, his chest, his stomach, his knee, his _arm_ , they’re all aching and burning and screaming with grief. He can’t lose Steve. Fate and Destiny and the bitch that is the Universe can take his fucking soulmate six or seven times over, but they _cannot_ take Steve. Steve is, Danny realizes, the only thing he has ever really wanted.

They bring him back, by the grace of _something_ , and Danny is right by his side as he’s gasping and staring dazedly into the world before him. He blinks the wooziness back and his eyes finally settle on Danny’s crying, beaming face.

“Danno,” Steve murmurs, like he’s just found the answer to the universe right there in front of him, hiding under his nose all this time. And hey, Steve just came back from the dead, so Danny figures maybe he did.

“Yeah, I’m right here, babe,” Danny says. Then a nurse is yanking him back and a team is wheeling Steve away because he’s not out of the woods yet. Danny collapses into the chair that’s offered him and then flinches away from the orderly that’s dabbing at his arm. “What the _fuck?_ ”

“Sir, you’re bleeding,” he says with a frown.

“That’s probably my partner’s blood,” Danny says, gesturing to his whole shirt-front, spattered in Steve’s blood. He has to burn his shirt, and this tie, which is a shame because he likes them both and they look amazing on him.

“I doubt it got all the way up your arm,” he says, and Danny stills and looks over and sure enough, it’s right where his soulmark is. He had been so worked up over Steve, he hadn’t noticed that something could have been happening. But when he peeks under the damn shirt, half hoping and half dreading what he’ll find, his soulmark is still there, albeit puffy around the edges. Danny doesn’t really give a shit, because Steve is fine, and he can literally just go see Tehani in the coming days and ask her what’s going on with it.

Danny’s gonna have a lot of time on his hands waiting for Steve to recover.

* * *

Tehani tells him not to worry about it too much. If the mark is there, then his soulmate is alive and well.

“It’s almost like the damn person _wasn’t_ but then was?” Danny says. “I don’t know. It definitely looked like the damn thing was starting to burn off but stopped.”

“Maybe your soulmate was injured or thought they were going to die. Psychological stress and maladies can affect them, you know,” Tehani says. “They could have a fatal disease or some type of illness. Maybe their heart skipped a beat due to some sickness and it reflected in your mark.”

“Aren’t there some people who, like, have heartbeats that stop sometimes or are really slow?” Danny asks. “Maybe my soulmate is one of them.”

“It really could be anything. Even the stress of work, Danny,” she says. “I heard your coworkers were injured and one almost died.”

“Yeah,” Danny says, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t remind me. Those people are messes. I think this is why I work with them: _someone_ has to remind them all to be a little safer.”

* * *

Steve recovers and Danny’s soulmark is still there. He’d be lying if he said he isn’t at least a _little_ disappointed.

He just wants the waiting to be over. He hates the anticipation, hates waiting for the moment that searing pain is going to come and whisk it all away. It’ll hurt and it’ll be disappointing on some level, but at least he won’t have to think about it anymore. He has enough on his plate what with Steve finally being fit for duty again.

“I’m fine, Danno,” Steve says when they get home that night. His first day back had been a success. Sure, they were now knee-deep in a difficult case, but they love that shit, so it’s not like Danny sees it as a bad thing.

“I know, I know, so you’ve been saying,” Danny responds, locking the house door behind them. Steve used to leave it unlocked sometimes, until Danny had lost his mind when he had been able to get into the house past midnight without using a key or a spare. Now, Danny is in charge of locking all the doors. Fuck this friendly neighborhood shit, Danny says trust no one you haven’t done a background check and gotten good results on.

It's late and they’re tired, but _it's_ bothering him. And he thinks he’s finally gonna do it.

Well, shit.

“Ok, actually I want to show you something,” Danny says when they’re getting undressed for bed.

“Oh, please tell me it’s my favorite part of your body, the one that gets real, real happy to see certain parts of _my_ body,” Steve says with a wicked grin. But then he sees the nerves and the seriousness on Danny’s face and the smile vanishes. “Danny?”

“Uh, don’t freak out?” Danny says, and unties the gauze from his arm, letting it fall to the ground. Another drama moment, Matty would say. Danny wouldn’t blame him.

And there it is, his seventh soulmark. That weird hook shape and the dot, whatever it is. Right under the rest of his scars, it sits a little warped from that day that Steve almost bit the dust and shit, shit, Danny really doesn’t want to think about that right now.

“You asking me to marry you, Danno?” Steve finally croaks. “Cos you said you’d never expose that thing to me unless you were about to trap me with you forever. And that was when we first met, so I’m sure you meant it in some kind of horrific way, but I wouldn’t put it past you to use it now as a proposal gimmick.”

“Well, you know Steven, I wasn’t thinking of it in that sense, but you’re totally right. I would do that. You know what?” Danny says, smiling wide like a loon. “I’m gonna do that. Steven McGarrett, this is what my stupid, seventh soulmark looks like. Wanna get hitched?”

“Yeah, I wanna get hitched,” Steve says, grinning just as wide and blinding. He goes over for a kiss and it’s so, so good. Danny pushes Steve onto the bed, and is halfway to taking off Steve’s pants when Steve puts a hand to his chest and goes, “Wait, stop, stop.” Danny stops like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

“What’s up? Did I hurt you? Is something wrong? Talk to me, Steve, I don’t read minds.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Steve says. He gets up and turns on the light in their room, then goes to a drawer and takes out a penlight and a little notebook with papers stuffed between the pages.

“Do you… wanna scrap book this moment instead of having sex to commemorate it?” Danny asks, completely disappointed in the turn of events.

“Could you wait, like, five seconds?” Steve says. There’s something manic in his voice, like something’s just clicked for him. “I think you’re about to get really happy or really pissed.”

“Why?” Danny asks. “You’re not taking it back, are you?”

“Hell, no. You have to marry me now, no matter what I say next,” Steve insists.

“Fine by me. What’s up?” Danny says, scooting over to where Steve is sitting on the bed now.

“I think I’ve seen your soulmark before,” Steve admits.

“Yeah, fuck you. I don’t wanna see who it’s on. I’m marrying you already, remember? Dragging someone else into this isn’t gonna help _anyone_ ,” Danny snaps, surprised to find that he’s actually mad. Did Steve really just ruin this for them? Yeah, he says he wants to marry Danny, but what the hell is this? Why is Steve being his own homewrecker?

“Relax, Danny,” Steve snaps back. “Give me a second.” He opens the notebook and flicks through the papers and photos until he finds the ones he wants. He checks the dates and names on the backs and then shakes his head in disbelief. Then he laughs. “Wow.”

“What?” Danny says, voice tight. He doesn’t like this, is dreading whatever Steve is going to show him.

“Here, Danno,” Steve says softly. He hands over two photos, along with a slip of thick paper, then busies himself with the penlight. Danny takes the items and looks at them. He has to close his eyes and take a deep breath because he’s so irritated and _angry_ that his vision is blurring. But then, he looks. Steve wants him to look, so he’s going to look.

The first photo is of a man’s muscled arm, and Danny has to admit, it looks familiar and he knows that arm. It’s only from the neck to the waist, so he has no face, but he recognizes the mark on the man’s arm. It’s the twin to Danny’s soulmark. It makes him feel _sick_. How the hell can Steve show him this, and then expect it _not_ to haunt Danny’s every waking – and sleeping – thought?

“Flip it over, dumbass,” Steve says beside him, shining the light around. Danny snorts and does so.

The back has the words, _Steven J. McGarrett, 1996: pre-tattoo_ scrawled on it in Steve’s handwriting. Danny feels everything stop, the blood drain from his face, his stomach twist in knots, and his ears ring as he stares. He scrambles for the second photo of the same arm, this time with Steve’s left-arm tattoo adorning it, fresh, shiny, and red, his whole arm puffy and decorated with pinpricks of blood. The back of this one says, _Steven J. McGarrett, 1996: post -tattoo._ Danny is starting to feel just as stupefied. He reads the slip of paper which seems to be Steve’s birth certificate, and at the bottom in the official soulmark identification box is an old picture of an infant’s arm with a soulmark on it. It’s _Danny’s_ damn seventh soulmark.

“Ha, got it,” Steve says and Danny finally looks up, wonders why everything is blurry, and then realizes it’s because he’s _crying_.

Steve has the penlight shining on his tattooed, left arm. It’s a UV light, the beam a purplish blue. But the most important part is that, right above Steve’s elbow, _right where Danny’s is_ , is the shining outline of Danny’s soulmark, twinned right onto Steve’s arm. It’s right there. Danny has finally, finally, _fucking finally_ found his match.

“I’ve had this since I was born,” Steve says. “I looked at it for over 20 years before I got it covered up. I didn’t look at it often afterward, but when you showed me yours…” He trails off. “It was like déjà vu. I knew I had seen it before and then I started to wonder, _fuck is that mine?_ And here we are.”

“Yeah,” Danny says, laughing through the tears. “Here we are.”

“Are you…” Steve trails off, clicking off the light. Danny wants to turn it back on, so he knows right where to kiss and murmur his prayers of thanks that this one isn’t going to burn off. “Do you wish I hadn’t? I know you don’t like the whole idea of _perfect pairs_ , and it must rile you that you accidentally found yours but…”

“I don’t…” Danny shakes his head and then cups Steve’s face between his two hands and revels in the moment because this is his _soulmate_. “I don’t _hate_ the thought of perfect pairs, Steven. I’ve been jaded that I was cheated out of mine _six times_ , to the point where I was _so sure_ it was going to happen again that I didn’t even want to think about it. Because I was finally happy with _you_ , I thought I had to make my own happiness, and I honestly still think we did. But, no, I’m not mad. I’m just glad you’re not _dead_.”

“A little bit, actually,” Steve corrects. “I was dead for a little bit.”

“Please shut up and stop reminding me about that,” Danny moans, pressing their foreheads together. He’ll have to tell Tehani that her theory was right; his soulmate _was_ going through a life-threatening situation, a _mortally wounded_ situation, and his soulmark had started reacting before it got corrected when Steve was resuscitated. It’s probably good to know that they could do that.

For now though, he kisses and kisses and kisses Steve until their both laughing, blubbering messes, rolling in the sheets with sweat and tears that turn into sweat and pleasure and a little more sweat. It’s good, Danny thinks. It’s all good. He’d let himself get too jaded, but he still got this, in the end. And if Steve is all he ever gets, Danny is so very, very happy with that.

* * *

After they get married, Danny gets the date he and Steve first met tattooed by his still-there soulmark. Steve gets to see the final product on their honeymoon (to Kyoto, Japan – _not_ some other island in Hawaii) and he smiles wide. Danny has also gotten two red dice with white dots tattooed just below it near the inside of his elbow. The faces shown clearest are a five and two.

“Lucky seven,” Steve says, tracing his finger over it.

“Yeah,” Danny says with a shrug. “It’s you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, thanks for coming along for the ride. I wrote that in 1 (one) day and have zero regrets. A few things. The 'once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern' line is from, dare I say it, MTV's Teen Wolf. The last name Mahelani came from there too. But not Tehani. That's after a dear friend of mine from undergrad, and one day I'm gonna visit her, but right now she's busy back home in Hawaii with this volcanic eruption crisis. 
> 
> Also! All the dates and ages for Danny are based on Scott Caan's (the actor who plays Danny Williams) birthday. Which is funny because he was born on August 23, 1976 and Alex O'Laughlin (actor who plays Steve McGarrett) was born on August 24, 1976. These bitches are literally 1 (one) day apart. 
> 
> And Grace Park, the actress that plays Kono Kalakaua, is _older _than both those men by two years and is played as younger than them in the show, I'm shook and confused? Let her be older and school them, gosh!__


End file.
